Medic DPS rotation focuses on managing their 4 actuators and juggling max dps by being in the flux, while minimizing downtime of spenders. Medics don't worry about maximizing their burst for optimal times like other classes, due to their nature of having overall consistent damage. Typically, medics have a variety of builds they can run, but this guide covers the cookie cutter builds that will work in most situations. Comfort on a rotation is key, so customizing an LAS to an individual's need is suggested.

NOTE: This guide is pretty much going to be Work in Progress until Carbine decides they're ok with itemization and stats, so be sure to check back and give me feedback.

Introduction:

While not really a sloth, Mcherios aspires to be one by sleeping 20 hours a day and raiding the other 4. His interests include sleeping, dozing around, penguin spirit animals, and eating all the foods. If you have specific questions, feel free to message me, Its Mcherios, in game anytime.

Ability Overview:

► Show Spoiler

Assault Abilities

Energize - (Innate)

Fills up actuators, and for 8s (above 30% health) increase your AP and SP by 14%, or (below 30% health) increase your shield by #### and your shield mitigation to 100%. Typically should be used off cooldown, and with gadget when available. Since it builds actuators, Energize should be used typically with low actuators.

Discharge:

Bread and butter skill for medics. Discharge is the primary builder skill for medics, each tick of discharge building 1/3rd of an actuator with a full cast creating one. The T8 doubles each. Good for starter medics, varied use in builds.

Places a field down in front of your character for 6s. As soon as any enemy enters the field, a tick will be immediately applied and a 3s dot, ticking every .5s, will be constantly reapplied as long as the enemy is within the field. No target cap, typically used in AOE builds at base tier.

Fissure:

Applies a tech expose to 5 targets. One medic in the raid should always run it, t4 is enough for 100% uptime and with atomic charge runeset you're able to lower it..

Devastator Probes:

Applies Dprobes to 5 targets, dealing a DoT every 2s for 12s. At tiers 4 and 8, Collider and fissure detonates the probes dealing half the potential damage. Typically this skill is only used in a pure damage spec (base tier only).

Quantum Cascade:

Primary AoE skill, almost always t8. At t8, a full channel is two seconds costing 2 actuators total, granting a 5% damage empower and you are able to cast other spells while channeling. Currently has a HTCC (Hold to Continue Casting) issue, where if you let go of the button it will have issues re-channeling a second cast. To use this spell, you HAVE to hold down the QC skill while casting other spells and moving.

Collider:

Two ability charges, generating two charges per 10s. Drop 5 rework, at T4 casting collider and hitting both ticks generates an actuator. Can be used as a primary builder in certain builds, almost never used at T8. Can be used as an extra damage ability in certain t4 anni builds in order to reduce its cooldown.

Annihilation:

Same mechanics as nullifier, deals more damage but lasts 3s, with the DoT that reapplies lasting 1s. At T4, discharge, collider, and atomize are used to reduce its cooldown by 1s, and at T8 anni will deal extra damage if the target is also affected by nullifier or Dprobes.

Atomize:

Off the GCD and does not have one, deals damage and builds an actuator, useable after a multi hit. Always used in every build, T4 reduces atomize’s cooldown by .5s per multi hit, and T8 applies a DoT for extra damage.

Dematerialize:

Purges two buffs from a foe, at T8 can be used as a shield overload. Used in niche situations.

Healing Abilities:

Emission:

Same mechanics as discharge, used as a single actuator builder and scalpel/dual shock proc in certain builds.

Dual Shock:

Off the GCD and does not have one, deals damage and heals, while building an actuator. Useable after a critical heal, so must be used with emission.

Utility Abilities:

Paralytic Surge:

Primary stun for medics, T4 breaks two IA.

Urgency:

Primary movement ability for medics, T4 is used to break tethers, used only in niche situations.

Antidote:

Cleanse for medics, dispels two debuffs from you and 5 allies

Empowering Probes:

Gives you and 19 party members a 5% damage buff and 5% healing buff, at T4 +6% multi-hit severity (only you), and T8 deals an additional #### (1k+) damage on hit (every 1s).

Magnetic Lockdown:

Roots 5 foes and destroys 1 IA, interrupts target’s cast so can be used in place of Paralytic surge for interrupting an enemy.

Calm:

Medic’s CC break and Threat Drop, can also be used to trigger Scalpel/Forceps for a small dps boost.

Field Probes:

For dps, primarily used with the AMP Surgical, to increase raid damage by 6%.

AMP Overview:

► Show Spoiler

Assault Tree

Assault Power III

Always taken, raw AP damage increase

Strikethrough III

Taken as needed

Armor Pierce III

Usually not taken, only applies after armor shreds have been applied (but still testing with new formulas)

Victory Spark

Never taken. Poor AMP altogether, needs a rework.

Recycler

Always taken, great actuator builder

In Flux

Always taken, a majority of your rotation will be in the flux so it's a needed damage boost

Core Damage

Always taken.

Critical Priority

Taken Accordingly. It's a mandatory AMP to have, but if you have several medics in the raid attacking the same target, you can afford to drop this amp and take something else.

Situationally taken, typically procced by emission, dual shock, or calm. Best for damage of the three AMPs

Surgical

Situationally taken, gives the raid 6% damage and should be taken by at least one medic (healers can also bring it). Requires a slot on the LAS, and procs it's GCD, so typically is the least taken AMP

Renewable Probes

PvP only, heavily testing this skill it's an overall dps loss no matter how you use it in your rotation. I’m so sorry.

Null Zone

Situationally taken, should be taken by at least one medic in a raid and is a great asset. If multiple medics are in raid on the same boss as you, it can be forgone

Power Cadence

Mostly taken, typically when you’re maxed AMP points. Puts you over the flux occasionally, but now synergizes with atomic instability well

Utility TreeCooldown Reduction III

Always taken, 15% Cooldown reduction is great for all situations.

Stat Prioritization:

Itemization has completely been revamped, so I'll be explaining the core changes, and proceeding to go into stat prioritization.

Tech has been removed completely, and has been replaced with Assault Rating (4 rating = 1 AP). The soft cap for AP has also been removed, but since you're unable to rune for it any more what you get on your gear is what you get. You'll be focusing on maximizing gaining all stats through exceptional rune sets, prioritizing Multi-hit runes.

Crit's soft-cap is 30%, Multihit is 60%, Vigor optimization between 10 and 13%, and Strikethrough around 24% (Basically you want 17% for end game DS)(where afterwards it's converted into armor pierce, which isn't too great.)

In terms of raw damage, medic damage scales well with strikethrough up until the strikethrough cap on the mob you're targeting (and after it converts into armor pierce, which is bad). Medics scale well with Multi hit because most of their procs work with multi-hit. Vigor is also strong with medics, so the prioritization is roughly:

MH>STR>Vigor. You dont want to rune past the ideal values (ideal for Multi-hit being soft cap) but this is roughly the prioritization. Medics dont really use crit or crit severity as much as other classes, so don't try to worry about it. You get 6% from crit priority which is affected by diminishing returns, so you wouldn't want more than 20% crit anyway.

QC build doesn't rely on Multi-hit the way GR build does, so you want to have the optimal stats instead of stacking multi-hit (10% vigor, ~16.5% strikethrough for end-game DS, 50% multihit)

Strikethrough values are a bit different depending on your stage in progression, and I don't know the answers to all of the fresh 50 fights with new itemization. Avatus STR ideally is 16.5%, anything else in DS is ~16%, and GA ~12-14%.

All of these are subject to change (or error) because there will be constant updates to how these function.

Gear

► Show Spoiler

Gear progression has been made straightforward with Free-to-Play. Once you hit 50, it typically goes Shiphands->Adventures->Dungeons->Genetic Archives->Datascape in terms of gear progression (we will only be discussing dungeon and above)

You're looking for medium pieces of gear with Multi hit rating, Vigor, Strikethrough, and to a lesser extent Crit Chance and Crit severity. While any medium

Runes are a bulk of an item's stats, so even if your gear is less than optimal if you have runes in your gear you'll do alright.

Dungeon gear is ilvl80, which use superb runes. Genetic Archive gear is ilvl100, and Datascape gear is ilvl120. GA has class set tokens which are always ilvl100, with some misc. drops that are i96. Same with DS (DataScape), tokens are i120 and misc pieces are i116. Roughly the BiS gear are the higher ilvl class rune sets, with a handful of exceptions. However, the stat differences on each piece of gear is negligible in comparison to the runes, which is why there is no extensive gear list here (And I don't know every piece yet).

RUNES ARE IMPORTANT. Even if you don't have BiS, its worth your time to put in DPS runes in each slot.

Rune Sets:

SUPER IMPORTANT YOU READ THIS BEFORE BLINDLY RUNEING YOUR STUFF

-So Rune Sets are a tricky topic, since there is an optimal way to rune and a realistic way to rune. The first image shows a VERY basic rune guide

-USE YOUR HEAD PLEASE. There is no straightforward guide on how to rune, and I've realized this. I can really only test and calculate from my perspective (having 120 gear, and infinite exceptionals). From my understanding, for datascape you want to have roughly 17% strikethrough (without going over) higher than 40% multi hit, and 5-13% vigor. I cannot calculate perfect damage for every possible gear combination, and for whats your budget.

First thing's first. The Image. These two images show loadouts of optimal runes (using base 120 gear as the starting point) with the first image being 100% regular runes, and second image being exceptionals BiS.

Some notes about these images:-Striker Runeset is very good, but AVOID health, so you want MH and STR-# means how many runes its worth (so 1 is regular, 2 is exceptional)-Lv means the level of the rune. If your gear is lvl 100, then for example use a 100 rune and an 80 rune of MH and STR for weapon. Just tier down the rune levels to what your gear can handle- FUSIONS ARE IMPORTANT. There is an error in the Hands of the second img, we want SHREDDER not True Strike fusion rune. Sorry.- Mordachai Remoon's Ammunition and Stormtalon's eye Fusion runes are stronger single target than venom (MRA being stronger overall single) so if you get one, I'd suggest using it.- If you need to remove strikethrough because its too high for the content you're doing (like if you have 16% doing dungeons) then you can switch an onslaught for

BASE RUNE SETS (No exceptionals)

► Show Spoiler

FULL RUNE SETS (You can trade vigor Onslaughts for Cynosure, jury is still out on that)

► Show Spoiler

Courtesy of CK Jester

This is the ideal rune sets to have at end-game itemization. If you don't have your class rune sets, then I suggest using the Striker/Onslaught Sets (Similar to the first picture's shoulder's and legs with 3 striker exceptionals 2 onslaughts (only 1 of the 2 onslaughts need to be exceptional)

The fusion runes are hands down the best**EDIT USE SHREDDER NOT TRUE STRIKE I DONT KNOW HOW IT SNUCK IN THERE**, you can be greedy and not use quick feet fusion rune but overall they're the ones you should grab.

---------------------------------------------HOW TO RUNE.

Goal is to start from the first image and make it to the second in terms of runes. First you're going to want to transition the striker runes into exceptional runes (See Img2's Weapon if you need more Multi-Hit, Helm if you need more Vigor). Try to do one item at a time instead of spreading your runes around. Most 120 gear is BiS, if its slightly less optimized it DOESNT MATTER because runes give 400 rating per and items have a total of like 480 anyway so its negligable differences.

IF YOU DIDNT READ THE SET NOTES READ IT.

Its crucial you know MH>STR>Vigor (slightly better than each other) with Crit/Crit Sev in the trash.

Builds:

Medic builds rely heavily on high multi-hit, and the late GA / Early DS builds differ from Late DS builds due to gear and rune sets. Depending on your stage in the game, your rotation can change (especially with atomic instability rune set) depending on your personal situation.

Innate should be used when at 0 or 1 actuators, so timing its cooldown when you're at those actuator counts would be optimal.

Single/Duo Target:

► Show Spoiler

With the Gamma Ray/Atomize Changes, it's a viable single target build. It's rotation is fairly simple, the core concept is to spam Gamma Rays as much as possible with minimal down time, so atomize t4 off the GCD helps a ton with it. Typically you won't need a true builder (such as t8 discharge), since you'll be able to generate enough actuators with recycler+power cadence+fissure+atomize+innate. Occasionally, you will hit 1 or 0 actuators, where you triage once (and use dual shock to generate a second actuator). It's ideal to keep between 1 and 3 actuators for In the Flux bonus, and with atomic instability set you'll want to juggle between 2 and 4 actuators (without overgenerating actuators). If you're low on multi-hit, you want to use t4 Collider to keep up your actuators when needed. I personally prefer t4 fissure since its cooldown is reduced by the DS rune set, and it has the best debuff uptime.

This rotation is easier than QC, but requires multi-hit to perform well. T8 Empowering probes is now viable for this spec. The core of this rotation is to focus on not overgenerating actuators with atomize, and minimizing time wasted (such as fissure or triage while recycler's ICD is off cooldown) while keeping t8 empowering probes up.

If you have multiple medics in your raid, you can run t4 fissure for 100% uptime on the fissure debuff and only one medic is 'required' to run t8 empowering probes. Overall, GR underperforms compared to QC, but has better buff uptime (Especially without DS class set)

Honestly, I wouldn't suggest the GR+anni build. While it can outperform the other builds, its extremely clunky due to the actuator spending vs generation rates. It would be more viable of anni didn't have a GCD, or something. Issue with all GR builds right now is its a DPS loss to do anything but GR, and EVERYTHING (except atomize) has a GCD.

QC Rotations:

► Show Spoiler

QC build is a unique rotation. QC is a 2s channel at T8, and you are able to cast other abilities while channeling. You MUST hold down QC the whole time, otherwise the rotation will break and there will be a 1-3s pause of not casting anything. If you're holding down QC, release and repress the key, it will not recast it causing a delay in your DPS resulting in overall DPS loss. DON'T LET GO OF QC. Edit: You do not need to "hold down" QC anymore, you can repress it right before the channel ends to que it and allow it to recast without the HTCC bug. You can still hold it down, but its not mandatory anymore.

For QC build, you open with (holding down QC) Fissure+emp probes, then annihilation+atomize. During the next channel of QC, you discharge, and pop fissure/anni/atomize every 4th qc rotation, discharging the other 3. Typically you want to aim on casting discharge between the first and second tick of QC, in order to not break the channeling with the discharge cast (1.25s). Do not re-cast discharge during the same channel of QC, otherwise you will pause your next QC cast.

Fissure has a .75 GCD now, so it is feasible to cast discharge and Fissure in a single QC cast.

Dungeon/Fresh 50 Build (Not Maxed Points)Suggested to use this build if you're not maxed ability and amp points, adding points into anni as you gain more points.

T8 Discharge Build (Maxed points)As with the other QC builds, this build focuses on keeping QC constantly channeling. If you need to wait another channel cycle before casting an annihilation or fissure, its better to do so instead of pausing QC. You run t8 dicharge, t8 QC, t8 Anni, base fissure, emp, atomize, and collider (with one utility slot)

Medic QC build is completely melee, while GR is mid-ranged. Depending on the fight, you can switch if you need more leeway. Both builds are currently viable on single target, while QC is better 4+ targets. Realistically, for 1-3 targets you can use whichever build you’re more comfortable on since both rotations are viable.

For raid scenarios, you always want one medic running t8 emp probes, and making sure at least one medic is running null zone and Critical priority.

Surgical is a 6% raid damage buff, so one medic in the raid should be casting field probes constantly (Can be DPS or Healer)

Dprobes at base can be supplemented in builds if another medic is running fissure

Medic dps WILL change in the next drop, so be sure to keep up with the updates to the guide.

Changelog:

► Show Spoiler

9/29: Revamped Guide for Drop 6. New Itemization and slightly different rotations.

Last edited by Mcherios on Thu Feb 04, 2016 8:09 pm, edited 136 times in total.

Hi, i got a question about lockdown. I want to use this addon but every time i wilk on another char i see the tooltip of him, same than when i put my cursor on him. That's rly horrible for me cause my spell bar is a the same place. So can u help me ?

spiwQk wrote:Hi, i got a question about lockdown. I want to use this addon but every time i wilk on another char i see the tooltip of him, same than when i put my cursor on him. That's rly horrible for me cause my spell bar is a the same place. So can u help me ?

I would suggest adjusting your UI accordingly so it doesn't cause as much of a problem, or not use Lockdown if it remains an issue. Its personal preference honestly, if you find that lockdown isn't working well for you then don't use it.

Hm.... I have QC bind on my mouse, but it doesn't hold it all the time, more like a second and then lets go. I have to press it every time. If I bind it to keyboard works just fine, but then I have hard time moving around and pressing other skills. How do you do it? Any suggestion?

I personally use QC on my 1 key, Q,2,3,4,5,e,tab,capslock as my other keys, and just dance my fingers around while moving. It gets really annoying on fights like kuralak, but after getting used to it I personally like it. You could also try the (in game (?)) addon that lets you bind keys to your left/right mouse clicks and hold QC that way (I know lockdown used to, but I never used it). Otherwise you could try using a different mouse with an extra button and see if its still an issue. Otherwise I'm not sure what else to do, I have a simple two button mouse ^^

the 2nd rune set is something like an alternative? for example in image 2 with the exceptional runes, weapon should have 2 lvl 120 and one lvl 100 MC striker but as an alternative we could add multichance cynosure?

Dreadras wrote:the 2nd rune set is something like an alternative? for example in image 2 with the exceptional runes, weapon should have 2 lvl 120 and one lvl 100 MC striker but as an alternative we could add multichance cynosure?

Yes, the weapon in the second image (full exceptionals) is an alternative runes for weapon/helm/gloves/boots/chest (since all of them use a fusion rune).

Basically the sets are an ideal amount of vigor, strikethrough, and multi hit without getting hurt on DR too much. ONLY the weapon uses that set as shown because thats an ideal amount of strikethrough without going over, and too much multi hit will put you over multi-hit soft cap. While you CAN stack more multi hit for procs like atomize 4, its hard to actually math out which would be better. As long as you pass the strikethrough threshold and not ignore vigor completely, your runes can focus more into multi hit if you want

Got any good resources for the math on weapon fusion runes? I'm trying to determine whether or not I should swap my Mordechai Redmoon's Ammunition for a divine venom, and I can't find any definitive theorycrafting on MRA.

I tried some short parses on a dummy, and with the QC build, MRA was pulling ~330ish dps(4% of my total) while MRA with the GR build was pulling ~380ish(5% of my total).

zaery wrote:Got any good resources for the math on weapon fusion runes? I'm trying to determine whether or not I should swap my Mordechai Redmoon's Ammunition for a divine venom, and I can't find any definitive theorycrafting on MRA.

I tried some short parses on a dummy, and with the QC build, MRA was pulling ~330ish dps(4% of my total) while MRA with the GR build was pulling ~380ish(5% of my total).

MRA is currently BiS for single target damage (And jury is out for stormtalon's eye, but it might also be better than venom). I'll update my guide mentioning it, I originally posted venom because it was a craftable fusion anyone could instantly get.

IzorkX wrote:Hey. I have a question.How do you feel about the recent nerf to QC?Does it change anything, is QC still the strongest spec for max dps?

Recently started raiding with a new guild, and we run 1 GR with max emp propes, and me as QC. We are not sure whats the best setup either.

Thanks in advance!

While QC was a numbers nerf, they changed the 3% damage buff to stack mult. with other damage bonuses instead of additive. So I haven't fully tested it yet, but it doesn't appear to be significant enough of a nerf to make it worse than GR (if at all a nerf).

The new change with QC being able to que is huge. It reduces the skill required to play medic QC rotation significantly, since you will be able to que up QC-> discharge almost instantly instead of trying to guesstimate it and end up cutting off the next channel.

So my advice right now for medic is GR for utility, and QC for damage. QC rotation allows partial uptime for fissure and emp probes on raid (almost full with class rune set), and its more raw single target damage than GR build.

GR build allows you to run t4 fissure and t8 emp, which allows you to run it with 100% uptime even without the class sets. It also has two free LAS slots, which is huge in terms of utlity. GR build is more lenient about tiering down fissure and emp probes (to t0/t4 respectively). The rotation itself is simple as well, so when you're first picking up medic you can run GR without much practice.

In general, look at your logs and see which build is performing better. If both are doing relatively the same damage, and you don't need to cleave more than 2-3 targets, I'd suggest GR build. If you end up doing significantly worse (~15%+ damage loss) running GR, then you should go with QC.

In terms of raid comp, ideally you want to have 100% uptime on buffs. So if its a fight like phagemaw where the raid is stacked, one medic can run buff GR build, and the other QC (or whichever is higher for him). If its a fight like System daemons where there are North and South splits, then both medics should run fissure/emp in the GR build (unless you have t4 atomic charge rune set that reduces cooldown)

Hey Sir. I got one question about Runes. my gear is ilvl96, so i should use runes ilvl100 and ilvl80. But should i use the 2x ilvl 100 that's add 2 powers and 2x ilvl80 thats add 2 powers? How bonus stacks on that item? Thanks

Darkz wrote:Hey Sir. I got one question about Runes. my gear is ilvl96, so i should use runes ilvl100 and ilvl80. But should i use the 2x ilvl 100 that's add 2 powers and 2x ilvl80 thats add 2 powers? How bonus stacks on that item? Thanks

Hiya,

So if you're using exceptional runes (each rune giving 2 powers each) you want to run x2 ilvl100 and x1 ilvl80 for a rune set like striker.

Striker is a 6-set-piece-bonus, so you want 2+2+2 power runes to get all of the bonuses, anything after doesn't add to set bonus. If you're using a set like Overcharge (8 piece set bonus), you want a 2+2+2+1+! rune setup (which would be all ilvl100s since there are enough runes for that).